Home Invasion
by BuryTheHatchet
Summary: "She turned and left the apartment, running down the stairs and out of the building, for the second time in a day letting the tears slip down her cheeks over her partner." Ziva's thoughts when they are in Jeanne's apartment during Bury Your Dead. Another story that I do not know how to categorise.
**I was re-watching Bury Your Dead after a very long twenty-four hours yesterday, exhausted, and it got to the part where they walk into Jeanne's apartment and this sort of came to me. It is not very good and I was falling asleep as I wrote it – literally (I fell asleep at my desk almost as soon as I had finished it) – but I thought it was worth uploading. Someone might like it, or at least think it is okay.**

Home Invasion

Even just walking up the stairs of the building felt uncomfortable. She wondered how many times his feet had run up the steps, just to see her, whilst she was sat at home thinking and worrying about him. It felt like she was invading his privacy as she following him into Jeanne Benoit's apartment. Her eyes burned as he called her name, the tone he used. He would never use that tone with her. He would never be that worried about her. They were just colleagues. That was all. All they could ever be if they followed the rules. She couldn't look at him as he made his way across the living room. The way he walked, avoided knocking his knee on the coffee table, sat on the sofa like it was his own. Because it meant that he had spent enough time there to get to know the place. She cast a glance towards him as he stared at his hands before clearing the rest of the apartment. There were photos and memorabilia everywhere, making the apartment a home. It looked lived in, a contrast to her own apartment, which had very little in the way of personal items; she knew that she may be recalled to Mossad at any moment, or maybe KIA, and having an apartment full of things that needed to be sorted was not practical. She'd had to empty friend's homes before after something went wrong on a mission. It was never a nice job, and there was always the fear of any hidden surprises that you might stumble upon. And then there was the figuring out what to do with all of the stuff once it had been sorted through. That's why she preferred sparse living conditions. Nothing to burden anyone with.

She had to stop for a moment when she entered the bedroom and close her eyes, leaning her forehead against the door-frame. The first thing her gaze fell upon when she reopened her eyes was the rumpled bed sheets and her stomach turned. That was where he had made love to the pretty doctor whilst she had spent close to a year trying to make him notice her. She wondered briefly if they had been together the night before, whilst the rest of the team had been waiting for him in the bar. No, whilst she had been waiting for him in the bar. Ducky had been right; she felt like a woman with a wayward lover. And this was the sudden realisation that it hadn't been her that he had been in bed with all this time but the other woman, the one that captured his attention and held it. She recalled him telling her about the events of the previous night, in the morgue at the George Washington University Hospital. But they had still been at one another's sides. He had still protected her. She wondered why that angered her so much. Jeanne was an innocent, it was Tony's job to protect her. But then, she thought, her father was an international arms dealer; didn't that count for something? She scolded herself for that thought. Her brother was a terrorist, guilt by association was not how she could afford to think. Not with her own associations and not with the job that she did. It was wrong. The hospital was approximately a fourteen minute drive from the Navy Yard – she could do it in eight – which meant that approximately fourteen minutes after he would receive a phone call, they would be together. Maybe he took on some of her driving tactics to get there faster. Maybe he managed to cut the drive down to twelve, or even ten, minutes. She shook her head, taking a deep breath to steady herself and choking when she realised the room smelt of him. She hadn't noticed until then, but his warm, musky, woody scent filled the whole apartment and she suddenly felt like she was suffocating in it.

She walked back through to the empty living room, spotting the pink envelope with the feminine, loopy writing on it. Jeanne sounded like her complete opposite. They were approximately the same age, but that was where the similarities stopped. Jeanne gave life whilst she took it. Jeanne's apartment was warm and inviting, homely and comfortable, whereas hers was simple, lacking in decoration and personality. She would never have written a letter on pink paper, she would have used white or cream, if it was important. And her hand writing was small, neat and purposeful, not an elegant cursive script. She picked it up carefully and turned when she heard a noise at the doorway. He looked at her, an empty expression on his face. "On the table." She handed it to him and he turned away from her. She hung her head, staring at the heels of his shoes as he read the note, casting a glance to the back of his head and turning away again when he turned back to face her.

"Ever lie to someone you love, Ziva?" His voice was heavy but quite, held back by the emotions that his words carried. She just looked at him, scanned his face for any realisation of what his was asking her, any hint of knowing what thoughts swam through her mind every time she looked at him, or thought about him, or heard his voice. Nothing. He didn't know.

"Yes." She managed, giving a small nod. Any trace of the smile that she had been forcing to help him get through this was long gone.

"They ever forgive you?"

"They never found out." Tears started to build and she fought to keep them at bay, not wanting him to see her weak.

"Mine found out." She nodded and felt her heart shatter into a thousand shards, piercing the surrounding tissues and impaling her billions of times, each time reminding her that he had really loved the woman.

"He told her?"

"No…I did." He shook his head and relayed what had happened, paraphrasing. She could tell he was leaving moments out, some of her reactions, some of his. "Well, he said she'd come back after she'd calmed down. I guess he was wrong."

She momentarily struggled to find the words she needed, trying to fight the overwhelming need to run away and hide from everything, or worse, cry. Her father was right. Emotions were a weakness. She should never have broken her wall, never have let her heart rule her head. She should never have let the feelings for Anthony DiNozzo in, the feelings that caused her so much pain. "I will put out a BOLO. We will find her." She turned. An excuse to get out of the apartment, to get away from the smell of Tony. Earlier that was all she had wanted, to smell him again, hear his laugh and see his smile, but now all she wanted was to get out of there. To think, only hours before hand, she had been in the men's room, the door locked, trying to muffle the sound of her sobs as she mourned for her dead partner, and now there he was, stood three feet away from her and for the first time in a long time she wanted to be miles away from him.

"She doesn't wanna be found." She turned back to him and almost smiled. Maybe there was one way in which they were the same. If they didn't want to be found, they wouldn't be, or so Tony believed. However, she doubted Jeanne would have the abilities she did to disappear. If she tried hard enough, Ziva could probably find the woman, but the question was, did she really want to? She turned and left the apartment, running down the stairs and out of the building, for the second time in a day letting the tears slip down her cheeks over her partner.

 **I really do like writing from Ziva's point of view. I like being in her head.**

 **For my reference: 33** **rd** **NCIS fic.**


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